Connecticut's budget cuts hit Torrington Fire School funding

TORRINGTON >> With Gov. Dannel P. Malloy slashing more than $170 million from state budgets Wednesday, an immediate local line item possibly seeing a hit is the Torrington fire training school, part of Connecticut's Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection.

The fire school cut of $4,068 is mere pennies in contrast to the multi-million dollar rescinded by Malloy -- part of his plan to reduce the $365 million state deficit -- but might impact programming nonetheless. While the fire school is a regional training locale, Torrington Fire Department and the volunteer departments in the region could see the cuts precluding future training endeavors or minimal equipment.

Malloy has the statutory authority to rescind up to 5 percent of any line item and 3 percent of any fund without seeking legislative input.

And now, that authority reaches into the pockets of Torrington public safety.

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"As far as its affect on Torrington's training school, $4,000 is not a drastic cut," said Torrington Public Safety Commissioner Chris Cook. "But anything steeper than that could have an affect on that. Looking at the training our department has -- we have a top-notch fire department in Torrington."

The money will be left up to school officials to seek true cuts, but Torrington Fire Chief Gary Brunoli points to the volunteer departments as suffering the most from the small cuts. According to Brunoli, initial firefighting courses cost about $500 per student, so an approximate eight students could be affected by the $4,000 rescinding. Eight might not seem like a large number, but in a city and region surrounded with volunteer fire departments, training eight students could impact an entire rig.

"Will it affect them? Yeah," Burnoli said. "Four thousand dollars is going to be a hit."

Torrington Fire Department's career firefighters don't access the regional, state-funded school as much as the volunteer departments. "It's more important for the volunteer guys," Brunoli said.

Brunoli, who was recently named the fire chief, has a contractual clause requiring him to communicate better with the volunteer departments, a task City Hall officials believed important in the new agreement. The new chief recognizes bridging those gaps, and Cook, the public safety commissioner, recognizes as the fiscal cuts as another opportunity to build on that communication.

"One of the goals now is to work a good relationship with the careers and the volunteers," Cook said. "Hopefully we can utilize that as much as possible and it can only be a good thing. But $4,000, if you break it down, isn't much. It's up to the school to make those decisions."

The state's Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, which oversees licensing firefighters and organizations, saw a total of $60,721 cut from its funding. The largest line item cut was a $28 million reduction recognized in state employees health service costs, and the smallest cut, a $4 reduction, came from the Cash Management Improvement Act. The Governor's office removed a combined $33,957.

The cuts come on the back of a record tax increase, proposed by Malloy and passed by the legislature, and come in response to a budget shortfall that state officials didn't expect.

"There is no one reason for the projected shortfall," said Connecticut Office of Policy Management Secretary Ben Barnes. "The sluggish national economy is part of the equation. Revenue hasn't recovered as it has in the past when Connecticut was working to climb out of a recession. The demand for services, particularly Medicaid, remains higher than expected. But we have faced larger challenges than this, and done so responsibly. Nothing on that front has changed."

Barnes also pointed out in a statement that "had the economic recovery been similar to the 2003 recovery, revenue from Income and Sales taxes would be $725 million higher."